As the public backlash to cheap AI-generated slop continues to grow, companies continue to insist on cutting costs by relying on the tech for their ads.
Some are taking the trend to the extreme by creating deepfakes of videos uploaded by real influencers to market their products.
Sleazy gambling and insider trading platform Kalshi is under fire after tech YouTuber Elliott Choy found that one of his videos had been turned into an ad that he was served on YouTube — a process that involved turning the Asian-American creator “into a white dude” that doesn’t exist.
It’s a particularly egregious example that not only involves a company shamelessly stealing user-generated content, but whitewashing the subject in the video as well, all the while making them shill a product. As Choy notes, he made the discovery just hours after Stanford University was caught using AI to swap out a student in a photo and replace him with a non-existent Black woman.
